The present invention relates to an electric cigarette lighter.
Economical automation of assembly represents an imperative goal of the future, in particular under the increasing pressure of competition, to exploit fully all the economic potential of production technology.
An electric cigarette lighter, in particular of the type to be installed in the instrument panel of a motor vehicle, is known from German patent specification 2,535,080, wherein the electric cigarette lighter has an illumination device which consists essentially of a lamp, a lamp housing and an illumination ring arranged between the instrument panel and the cigarette lighter socket.
This illumination device, known from the prior art, needs to be improved from the aspect of a product design appropriate to assembly, said design being a prerequisite for economical automation of assembly. Thus it is disadvantageous, for example, to arrange the lamp and the lamp housing eccentrically outside the region defined by the diameter of the illumination ring. For this reason, the known illumination device described above does not allow a linear mating movement when the lighter assembly is being inserted in the installation opening of the instrument panel. Instead, a curved insertion movement is required, which prevents or renders difficult the use of assembly robots. It is also disadvantageous that the illumination device cannot be preassembled together with the socket at the suppliers' works, thereby necessitating three individual assembly steps at the automobile works. Thus, after insertion of the illumination ring in the instrument panel, the socket must be depressed into the panel opening, in which case the illumination ring has to be held firm until clamping tabs constructed in the illumination ring have been spread out for the purpose of catching in the instrument panel, with the clamping tabs being spread out by the insertion of socket. Furthermore, these clamping tabs also impair the even distribution of light in the illumination ring. In this case, attention must be paid additionally to the correct mutual positioning of the illumination ring and the socket. For this purpose, aligning tabs are required in the illumination ring, which aligning tabs break off when the socket is inserted. Finally, in a third assembly step, a connection plug situated in the rear part of the instrument panel must be connected for the electric current supply to the lamp and to the heating element of the cigarette lighter. Furthermore, the illumination device known from such prior art also has a relatively large number of individual parts. Thus the lamp socket alone consists of five individual parts and, in addition to these, there are also the lamp housing, with the rubbing contact surface required due to the ground contact to be produced to the socket, and the illumination ring itself.